Back To Where She Once Belonged
by LilacFree
Summary: Tegan leaves the TARDIS in 'Time Flight' and returns in the next episode, 'Arc of Infinity'. What happened to her in between?


This is set between the episodes 'Time Flight' and 'Arc of Infinity'. At the end of 'Time Flight', the Doctor and Nyssa leave in the TARDIS without Tegan. After all, she has finally reached Heathrow which is where she's asked many times to be taken. Due to the events of 'Time Flight', she has been returned there on the day she left.

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The empty space once occupied by the TARDIS now took up a large portion of Tegan's mind. It was the still, empty center around which things happened to her without her feeling as if she were taking part in them. This should be her time and place but she did not feel attached to the consequences of her actions.

She had planned for this return. She patiently explained to various officious faces that her aunt Vanessa had been murdered today and she could not go on a flight to Australia. Hours. She'd been gone a few hours today, and in that span Tegan had criss-crossed history like an editor's pen on a novice writer's manuscript. And through all that time, this moment had awaited her, the moment where she had to witness the grotesque doll the Master had made of someone Tegan had loved.

Blackness spilled out of the empty place like ink from a broken pen. She did not want to contemplate the Rorschach blotch there for she was afraid she would recognize the shapes forming. Someone must have expected her to snap, for she felt the sting of a needle in her arm and after that the darkness was without form.

It must have been a dream.

"Tegan, darling, can you hear me?"

"Huh?"

Tegan blinked. The room around her was mostly white, but it wasn't a room in the TARDIS. There was a big window with blinds. A hospital room. And there was Will. She remembered Will. Her boyfriend, Will. William Stratton, Air Australia pilot. There he was like a normal person: brown hair, blue eyes, slightly crooked nose from a football accident, and Australian accent. She thought that she remembered he had a nice smile, and she wished he would show it so that he'd seem more like a person she actually knew instead of a face from a picture in a magazine.

"Would you like some water?" He held a cup to her lips and carefully tilted it so she got a few drops in her mouth. "Just a tick, I'll let the nurse know you're awake." Will began to stand up.

"No, wait. Will?"

"Yes, it's me." He waited, continuing to look like a dream of real life.

"I'm not sure I'm awake. Where's the Doctor?"

"The nurse will know," he said, starting to move again.

"Not that doctor. The one… " What doctor? Tegan clutched at the sheet. "I feel sick."

Will pushed the call button. A nurse came and put a cold cloth to Tegan's forehead and checked her pulse and temperature. Tegan found her surroundings beginning to look real again, and it made her want to cry. Had it all been a dream?

"Aunt Vanessa. She is dead, isn't she?"

"Yes. I'm so sorry, Tegan."

"What happened?"

Will raked a hand through his hair. "I'm not exactly sure, Tegan. No one's told me much. You identified the body and had a breakdown. My flight got in this morning and I came to see you."

"What day is today?"

"March the second."

"And the year? No, never mind." Tegan rubbed her hands over her face. It had all been real. She had to keep thinking that, or else she would go off her nut. She'd gone through too much for those memories to give them up as a bad dream. "Has someone made arrangements?" There must have been something odd in her face or her voice, for he stared at her with an unnerved expression. "She's been cremated. There's going to be a memorial service tomorrow."

An annoyingly calm voice recalled itself to her memory, talking about keeping strange events quiet and not alarming the public. Cremation. That made sense, if macabre sense. And here was Will, trying to be a good boyfriend. "Thanks for coming to visit me," Tegan said, trying to care. She remembered that he was good company; remembered agreeing with her friends that he was prime husband material; and could not recall at all how she felt about him. Had there been anything real and strong between them or had it only been a few fun romps in bed?

"I want to get out of here." Tegan sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the hospital bed. She was wearing one of those awful hospital gowns that felt like small bathrobe on backwards. Her head was clear now, and she noticed that she was extremely hungry. "I want to go to the service. I want to look in the mirror." She stood up, and ducked away from Will's steadying hand on her elbow.

Tegan stared at her face. It still wore the vestiges of her last makeup job and the pits of her eyes were speckled black with stray mascara. The last time she'd seen her own face had been in the mirror of the room in the TARDIS she shared with Nyssa.

Nyssa had left her. She wasn't that surprised that the Doctor had left her, but for Nyssa not to say good-bye? That hurt. Maybe the TARDIS had malfunctioned.

"You do look a fright, old girl," Will said, trying for gentle humor.

"I need a shower. Talk to someone about getting me out of here, please?" She closed the door on him. The tiny hospital bath had been supplied with basic toiletries. A hot shower did wonders to restore Tegan's sense of self. This was her wet, naked body. Bodies and their needs possessed an inescapable reality. The TARDIS had gone. That life was over. Now she had this life again, the same life that a whole planet full of people had. Of course she'd manage.

Shock, the doctor explained. He said she seemed much better now and released her from the hospital with instructions to take it easy. Tegan had to put on her uniform again. These clothes had traveled the universe with her, and she secretly loved the wear of experience on them that helped ground her reality. Her uniform was a wreck and her aunt was a doll. These things were real, as real as a hangnail or a cheese sandwich or a mountain of paperwork. Will drove her to her aunt's flat.

"You've been a rock, Will. I don't know how to thank you."

"No need for that. Tegan—" he stopped short and looked at her unhappily. "I know you've been through a lot, but you seem awfully distant. Every time I move an inch towards touching you, you move away. I don't want to force anything on you, far from it, but please, have I done something wrong?"

"No, no!" Tegan bit into her lower lip. "I'm not the same Tegan Jovanka that walked out of this house a few days ago." How did she explain the Doctor without being dragged right back to the hospital? And if she didn't tell the truth, how many lies could she tell before they choked her?

"Tegan, calm down. I'm not going to interrogate you. When you're ready to talk, let me know. There's nothing you can't tell me, no matter how bad it is."

The right words were oh-so-wrong. She looked at him refraining from patting her on the arm and figured he thought she'd been raped by whoever had murdered her aunt. That would have been normal compared to being abducted by aliens. "I wasn't raped," Tegan said brutally.

"I'm glad to hear that," Will said carefully. "I don't know anything, really, Tegan. They wouldn't tell me anything because we're not even unofficially engaged and you haven't told me anything. I'm trying not to make assumptions."

"Yeah, sorry. I can see that. I can't explain, Will, ever. It's impossible. It's changed me. I've got a lot of work to do to get my life back together. You shouldn't wait—it sounds awful, when you've been so kind today, but it's like we're strangers. You don't know me any more; I don't know me any more."

Will Stratton stared at her with bewilderment that was shifting into resentment. "You haven't changed in some ways," he said with dry Australian humor.

Tegan sat looking at him like he was a memento. He was still attractive. He was a taste of home. He even lived in Brisbane.

He might as well have been from Pluto for all she felt connected to him any more. There was nothing left.

"Tomorrow, at the service, it's going to be a memorial to the Tegan you knew as well as to Auntie Vanessa. You're welcome to come if you want."

"I've stood by you this far. I guess I can do it another day. In memory of Tegan."

"You're a good man, Will Stratton." Tegan touched his hand with her fingertips and even that small contact was an effort to make. She got out of the car and heard him drive away.

There was a little piece of yellow police tape still clinging to the door of Vanessa's flat. She'd have to pack up her things and move out. Now Tegan Jovanka was a homeless wanderer. She'd go to a job that hurtled her from place to place at the capricious dictates of airline schedules and personnel needs. It did slightly resemble life on the TARDIS, didn't it?

Time was passing by in an orderly procession measurable by the sweep of a clock's hand. How much older was she than the last time she'd passed through this door? It felt like a lifetime. In one day, Tegan Jovanka had died and then been reincarnated in her own body, a transient soul with memories of other lives. Why had she nagged the Doctor to return her to this life? She hadn't known when she had it good, and that included the Mara, the Cybermen, and the Master.

Well, now she had what she'd wished for. "Best get on with it," Tegan told herself, and unlocked Aunt Vanessa's door.

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The End

Author's Note: Will Stratton is my own invention. I think it's quite reasonable that Tegan might have had a steady fellow back home.


End file.
